JWST Discovered The Farthest Star Ever Seen!

In case anyone is wondering, Earendel's proper distance is 28 billion light years away (the distance its location is now), the light we see from it is 12.5 billion years old, and it was 3.5 billion light years away when it existed and emitted the light we see now.

How incredible is it that light rays once from the same source but then lost from each other for billions of years at ludicrous distances finally end their journey back together again in such a tiny patch of space as a telescope receiver. EDIT: some light beams guys, didn't mean all

Absolutely love the name for this star! The star of Eärendil…

as an ent-level tolkienist, i am fervently hoping that it turns out that earendel is in fact revealed to be a binary star system, as discussed at 11:00, and the individual stars can be named laurelin and telperion. ❤

"Hold up, we need to talk about how nerdy I can go for a full minute here" ...."OK now back to the physics"

Hearing Matt talk about LOTR characters and quickly shift to astrophysics and cosmology is next level nerd and I couldn't be happier 🧙‍♂️✨🌌

This is one case where we can say with certainty that the star we are seeing no longer exists. It exploded a long time ago but the light from the explosion hasn't reached us yet.

As a Tolkien fan, I love this name! Earendil with a Silmaril in the night sky... The very star Frodo was watching from the mountains of Mordor.

I don't think Galadriel would be happy if she found out that JWST captured the light of Eärendil.

"We no longer need to invent our own origin story. We can know it." Powerful stuff Matt.

Eärendil's star was also of particular importance to the Elves by the time of the Third Age, and it became their "most beloved" star. Galadriel set its light in her mirror, capturing some in the phial she gave to Frodo Baggins. When Frodo used the phial against Shelob, he unconsciously cried out an appeal to the Star of Eärendil; its light was effective in repelling the spider, though it would have been more powerful if used continuously. Sam later tried to use the phial in the Crack of Doom, but Sauron's power there dimmed even the light of Eärendil.

Looking through the stem of a wine glass to simulate gravitational lensing is peak physics professor. Whoever first figured that out deserves credit

it's amazing that hubble is still so useful in finding new things and even that it's still operational

LOVE the nerdy references to Tolkien and other languages. Agree, it is awesome! It is rare I understand the entire episode...this was a delight.

once I saw George Clooney from far away. Furthest star I've seen

Somewhere deep in the dark distant past, a voice carried on stellar winds is still traveling billions of light years towards us to announce: "FIRST!" 😂

Even if we find abundance of large stars like that it may be due to survivorship bias rather than large stars being more present in the past. Large, brighter stars have higher chance of being spotted.

I love the star's name. Beautiful. Always admired beauty of Tolkien's characters names.

Matt talking Tolkien is just too much to handle <3

That lonely star at the end of the universe: would that be next to the restaurant at the end of the universe? I'm planning to go there soon and need to map out my route.